


Sleeping With Ghosts

by dirtyicicles



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Character Death, Loneliness, Loss, M/M, Swearing, alternate reality shiro, alternate universe cast, alternate universe lion swaps, how many times can i say alternate universe in the tags, somewhat graphic depictions of body horror and the like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 09:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12340356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtyicicles/pseuds/dirtyicicles
Summary: Shiro's dead and the wolves have come out to play. It's a game Keith doesn't find himself caught up in.In this universe, anyway.





	1. Interlude

He was mangled. 

In the sense that the stench brought Keith's palm tight against his nose. His chest stuttered, his heart heaved. His eyes locked on and stared at the decayed reflection of the man he once knew. Keith felt his knees go weak, his footsteps falter as he dragged himself closer to a corpse embalmed in steel and wiring, still glowing purple and sunken into grayed flesh. 

At first glance, Keith wouldn't even have known it was him. Shiro was so far gone at this point, there wasn't much left to write home about. It was just a corpse. Some signal from somewhere out there, out from nowhere, that was meant to serve some kind of purpose once it had hit its mark. 

But it was Shiro. From the height, to the build, even with some metallic appendage attached to the shoulder, frayed like a blossom that had died and withered in a fire. It was Shiro. Keith, with shaking fingers wrapped tight around the dog tags he found at a broken neck, confirmed it so.

_Takashi Shirogane_

Keith felt the hard edges of the amulet cut past his glove, into his skin. There was nothing else but the rush of blood in his ears, and the small compartment of the ship that housed him and what was left of Shiro. Keith felt his knees begin to buckle. His vision blurred at the edges, and the yelling he could hear in the din of the world turning over onto its axis was just noise. Far-off noise. 

Keith's hand went for Shiro's face, but another grabbed it before it hit its mark. 

“Dude! We have to go!”

Lance appeared in his line of vision, his hands on Keith's biceps. His grip was firm, shaking Keith to force his glossed gaze back into something that looked at the reality of their situation. Pidge and Hunk were yelling in the background about someone coming in from the outside, and Keith could hear the roar of engines drawing closer. The garrison was closing in, and Lance shook Keith harder. 

“Come on! I'm not leaving without you,” he said, his voice nearly begging as he started pulling Keith along. The irrational side of Keith wanted to shove Lance away, to push his way back to Shiro's side. He knew the garrison wouldn't be an issue; after all, he'd spent all those months by himself, training, looking, searching, for a reason. 

And his reason had finally come back to him, crash landed where home had meaning, leaving it devoid of any purpose in just the span of fifteen seconds. 

Shiro deserved better. 

Shiro deserved more.

Shiro didn't deserve to be left behind like this.

Tears welled in Keith's eyes as he fought Lance's grip, a grip that grew surprisingly stronger as the adrenaline rushed through their veins. Lance managed to keep his hold on Keith, even as he writhed, he lashed out, and he felt the crunch of his knuckles hit home against Lance's cheek.

Lance grunted, his grip finally loosening. Keith took the opportunity to turn, twist at the waist and rush back towards Shiro; but there was a foot that hooked against his ankle, kicking it hard and sending him stumbling against the wall. Keith felt himself land on his shoulder, a gasp slipping from his parted mouth as his shoulder hit the wall, sending a shock through his system. 

“We have to _go!”_

Pidge was there now, yelling in unison with Lance. He was back on his own two feet, righted, a palm nursing where Keith's fist had hit him. Hunk was babbling nonsense about how the garrison was _here,_ right now, and how they were all going to die. 

An over-exaggeration. 

One that managed to get Keith back in the plane of his right mind. 

“Fine!” he yelled, shouldering past the two blocking his way. Hunk was shoved to the side, and Keith's strides carried him off towards where he parked his hoverbike. It waited, engines still purring, and he slung himself up into the seat. Bent forward, he had every intention of leaving by himself. 

Pidge grabbed him by the thigh, kicking him in the leg again with a glare as sharp and panicked as the one he felt himself carry. 

“We're going with you,” Pidge said, leaving no room for argument as he climbed onto the bike behind Keith. Before he could argue, the other two followed suit, Hunk reaching out to hit Keith's shoulder in a panicked flurry. 

“Go, go! Go, please, oh my god, go,” he begged, wailing his voice into the air. A voice their pursuers caught onto, two of their trucks branching from the main group and speeding up towards where they sat. Defeated and at a loss for fighting, Keith revved his bike and set it out to cleave through the sands.

Despite the added weight, they cut through the night air, the wind picking up their dusted trail and carrying it away. Their distance added confusion to the chasing trucks, and the voices heard from within their depths were almost completely muffled from the raging wind and Keith's engine. Almost lost, but not quite, Keith sent them plummeting into the valleys that laced the very edges of the garrison's territory, arguing over the drop that they would be fine. 

An argument he wished wasn't right at the time, but one that proved itself as they hit the rocky bottom below. The other three lurched onto Keith at the impact, and the bike shuddered underneath them. Keith forced it onwards, elbowing someone away from him as he sped off back towards his lonely asylum. 

The sun's light washed itself over the sands, pink and golden by the time they finally made it back to the shack. Keith's bike came to a juddering halt at its door, smoke billowing from its depths and wrenching a curse from Keith's lips. 

“Go in,” he spat, waving the other three towards the door. He kept his gaze fixed on the red paint, on the smoldering metal inlaid inside the exoskeleton plates that hinted at the fact the thing was done for. 

Keith held his breath, heard the door creak open, slam shut, and he finally let his knees hit the ground.

_____

“Do you think that had anything to do with that Voltron-thingy you were talking about, Pidge?” 

Hunk's voice was quiet, whispered. Pidge elbowed him, hard. 

“Ow,” he hissed, “what was that fo-” 

He shut up the moment the door swung open. Keith didn't give them the time of day as he sidled inside, hands blackened and hair matted. The sun had reached its peak, coating him in a thin sheen of sweat that stained his shirt and made it stick uncomfortably, like a second skin. 

Lance watched him, somewhat off-put with a bruising cheek. Pidge kept his elbow buried into Hunk's side, and the only noise to cut the tension in the air was his whimper. Keith sighed, finally letting his mauve gaze fall on the three, the heel of his palm pressed underneath his eye. 

“The what?” 

“The Voltron-thingy. Pidge, explain.” 

Hunk looked to him with his immediate response, eyes wide. Pidge's glasses caught the sunlight, masking his glare as it dug into Hunk's own eyes. 

“...It was before the crash,” he finally answered, rolling his eyes away from Hunk and towards Keith instead. He reached for his bag, and slowly, Keith moved to sit on the opposite side of the poor excuse of a plywood table between them. From there, nursing his cramped and swollen fingers, he watched about the pettiest reveal of a notebook he'd ever seen. 

“Here,” Pidge said, slamming the notebook down onto the table. Keith eyed it warily, reaching out to carefully grab it by its wrinkled edges. He kept his eyes on Pidge's, before slowly letting them fall down to to discover a crude drawing of...

“A robot?” he asked, his expression flat-lining. 

“I don't know, okay?” Pidge retorted, lunging forward to rip the notebook from Keith's hand. “All I know is that something's happening, and we're all out here, stuck in the middle of the fucking desert.” 

Hunk gasped, and Lance's eyes widened, but everyone was quiet as Pidge huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. Lance awkwardly leaned a little closer to Hunk, who in turn pressed just as close, like they were trying to eliminate their very existence from the room altogether. 

Moments passed in silence. Pidge turned his body towards the door, Lance and Hunk draped themselves over the other, their conscious effort not to touch or bother the other two obvious. Keith still wanted to tell them to just go already, to be rid of anyone else aside from himself, but... 

But there lay too much of a coincidence with the mention of that “Voltron” thing, and his own petty findings from over the last twelve months. Findings hidden behind a measly sheet tacked to the wall behind him, findings suddenly revealed with a hard sigh and quick flick of the wrist. 

“Here,” Keith muttered, letting the fabric fall to the floor with a whisper. He snapped his fingers to grab the other three's attention, Hunk nearly jumping from his skin before looking like a guilty dog. Keith already felt drained. 

“It might be related. It might not. But...” 

Keith furrowed his brow, gesturing to the notes plastered against the cork board, the drawings that accompanied each one, the evidence of a crazed lunatic who lived in the desert, grasping at straws. The other three returned to their usual silence, but Keith could hear the shifting of bodies as they all looked the maniacal display over. 

“Whoa,” Lance whispered. 

“Is that the surrounding area?” Hunk asked, looking more to Pidge than Keith. 

“Yeah,” Keith answered anyway, hand on the hip as he waved towards the wall. “There's a series of caves. Call me crazy, but after what happened...what happened last night, I don't think it's too far fetched now.” 

He paused, focusing on his breathing. “I don't know. It's been like some energy has been telling me to come out here. So I did, and I stayed, and this is what I found. Take it or leave it.” 

The other three were on their feet, Pidge in the lead as he looked the drawings over. Keith made a point to not bring any attention towards the notes left for the previously deceased. Luckily, they all seemed keen on keeping quiet about them. 

“This is a mountain range around here,” Pidge said, pointing to a photo of sanded peaks. 

“Yeah. Just west of here.” 

The three broke out into hushed mutterings, crowding around the cork board. Keith felt himself balk, but he turned his gaze towards the window, letting them have their fun. It was all useless at this point, anyway. 

Or so he had thought. 

“You talked about feeling something, right?” Pidge asked, his hardened expression having softened. 

Keith nodded. 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, let's see if we can put that to numbers.”

_____

In the end, the rest had been, as they always say, history. Monumental history, at least. The kind that involved being launched into space in the maw of a robotic cat, the same energy being exuded from its being, the one that had been calling to, pulling at Keith for so long, an unanswered question that had finally found its closure. Something that found them on a different plane of existence entirely, locked inside of a castle with no formative reasoning for being there, other than the fact it just _was._

Keith managed to take it all in stride. Somewhat, anyway. 

He had trained to be a fighter pilot.

While space wasn't technically outside the realm of the job requirements, it wasn't mandatory. Keith trained himself for the airs in the atmosphere, upper and lower, breaching the heavens with outstretched arms and fingers that only just scraped the stars. 

The stars were Shiro's thing. Keith and Shiro had both heard the endless lectures on how Shiro was wasting his talents, going into exploratory, rather than combat. Shiro had never liked combat, and he never found purpose in it. Keith was just a wayward soul who needed to be grounded _somewhere,_ in a profession that, ironically, kept him in the air. 

He was content with it, at least. It kept him away from the surface of what was essentially hell, with pockets of calm that only existed in Shiro's presence. But their contentment in their self-given duties forced them apart in the end, and Keith... 

Keith sighed. 

He leaned his weight against Red's leg, looking up into her face, her parted maw. She was poised to let him in, ready to go at a moment's whim. It was a tempting sight, but Keith crushed his fingers against his jaw, rubbing the corner firmly instead. Allura was calling for them, her somber voice picking up over the speakers like a ghost in the dark, empty hallways. 

“Keith,” she said, her eyes immediately on him as he entered the control room. “We're all here. Good.” 

With a quirked brow, Keith found his spot beside Lance. 

“What's up?” he asked, stepping an inch away from Keith. Keith rolled his eyes. 

“Coran and I have been talking,” Allura answered, “and we've come up with a solution for...well, our Voltron problem. It's not an immediate fix, and it's not anything to do with us. You can rest assured in that regard.” 

Her eyes were on Keith, as were the gazes of the others. He felt the red flare up behind his eyes, felt the front of his head fill with the words he wanted to say, but Allura's own were cutting off the scathing reprimands before they could even start. 

“If it's a technical issue, then it's time to retrace our steps, to ten thousand years ago, when my father was still alive and our empire was still going strong. It's a stretch, but I believe if we all put our heads together, we can fix this. If the universe has hope in us, then surely we can overcome this unsightly obstacle.” 

She smiled, warm and gentle and directed at the four of them. Pidge muttered something underneath her breath, a comment Hunk nodded in return to. He looked to Lance, who shrugged, and eventually the three looked to Keith. 

“I guess,” he said, the stitch in his brow nearly permanent these days. “I'm not the leader. Just because I can pilot Black, too, doesn't mean everything has to be left up to me.” 

“And you're right, Keith. No one of us has to shoulder this burden. Allow me to explain...” 

Allura's words carried off into dimming lights, holographic projections glittering to life and floating in the air before their eyes. 

“At the height of its rule, the Altean empire came into possession of a comet made of a material not seen anywhere else in the universe. This comet was used to build the lions you know today.” 

She paused, a crease to her brow that didn't exactly build upon the whole _the universe has hope for you_ thing. 

“I suspect something has gone wrong. A broken connection among Voltron, something gone awry in their inner mainframes. Or, simply, times have changed, and they cannot form Voltron amongst each other anymore. So what I propose...” 

Allura took a deep breath, Coran coming to stand beside her. “What I propose is we build a new lion. One that is not so finicky with its paladin, and one that can accentuate each unique quirk of the others so Voltron can always be formed, no matter the lion missing. How long this will take, I do not know, but our castle's sensors are already scanning the known universe for a material similar to the lions, and the comet's data stored away in our archives. What's left is hope that we will find one similar, soon, and if we do...Zarkon does not get there before we do.

"Until then, it'll be within our best interests to keep aiding what planets we can, and spreading the word that Voltron _will_ make its comeback. Sound good?” she finished, shoulders lifted, expression hopeful. It was the kind of hopeful that unfurled itself from a cocoon like a god damn butterfly, a kind of hopeful that left Keith feeling sick, feeling resentful. 

He nodded with the others, but he kept his weight on his heels, ready to turn at any given moment. 

“Keith,” Allura said, dragging him back to face her with obligation crushing his windpipe. “I'd like you to check out a planet at the edge of what we call the minefields. Red is the only one who's small enough and quick enough to navigate the spaces between the highly-combustible compounds. I'm afraid it's rather dangerous, but we caught the faintest flicker in our signals of something more out there. 

"Is this agreeable to you?” 

Keith nodded, and he'd never before felt himself walk so far away so quickly.

_____

Keith's knuckles clenched the controls for Red like he was trying to choke something. His hands were white, bleeding red against the backbones and skyrocketing carpal tunnel about three years down the line. He eased Red through the strange field of floating rubies, watching their flames flicker inside their polished cores. _A fool's treasure,_ Coran had sung. _Just one touch and you'll go boom!_

A comforting thought, Keith had decided. He kept it close to his heart. Or his spleen. For the amount of attention that thing was screaming for, it was best to keep them buddy-buddy.

Still, happy, comforting thoughts aside, Keith finally had to pull Red back to a stop. He punched his fist against the side of the chair, teeth gritted as he fought a sigh that'd bleed into a scream. He'd been at this for hours, lost contact with the castle, and hadn't found a single thing near the point on the map that would give the slightest of hints to their quarry. 

At this point, the cause was lost and hopeless. At this point, you'd think Keith would know how to keep a damn sense of direction about himself. At this point, you'd think he'd be better than this. 

But truth be told, he was lost in the middle of an asteroid belt made of explosives. The thought forced a rueful laugh from his mouth, and he kicked his visor from his face to rub punishingly at his eye sockets. Idiocy came in a lot of forms. Almost breaking your ankle sliding down a mountain side. Almost dying from dehydration in the middle of the fucking desert, because he'd spent all of his money from scrap on that radio upgrade for a dead guy. 

Getting lost in space. 

Keith wanted to kill himself. 

Red rumbled underneath him the moment the thought flickered across their shared stasis. Her presence blossomed and swelled like a lotus, the only calm in his tattered mind that he could even begin to grasp at. He hated beyond words to admit that a _cat_ from _space_ could be the only one to bring him back from the brink of self-isolated destruction, but he let her. 

He leaned back, and he let her. She purred, and before his eyes flashed a screen, lines connecting the dots on the blue hologram that mapped a course back to where they'd first started. A chiding growl resonated through the cabin. 

_All you had to do was ask._

Keith shouldered the feeling, letting it roll down his back. Glancing the map over, it was no wonder they'd been cut from the communications; he'd nearly found himself on the opposite end of the field. Weighing his options, he tapped his fingers impatiently against the side of the projector. 

He was already this far out. Might as well see what waited on the other side, at least. 

Red purred at the decision, easing Keith's grip upon her handles as she slid herself along their path. Each twist and turn was forcibly felt inside the cockpit, and Keith hit each side of his seat with some discomfort before the _rubies_ finally thinned. Their red aura gave way to the black, empty void of space. Only far-off stars could be seen in the distance, and sans the occasional creak from Red's hull, all was quiet. 

Keith sucked a sharp breath between his teeth. He could hear them grinding against each other, the tension in his shoulders paramount. 

He waited. 

Nothing. 

He waited some more. 

Still nothing. 

Exhaling heavily, Keith flexed his fingers along the handles, turning to get them both out of there. He could see for eons, and if that empty space gave nothing away, there was no use in lingering. 

But a blip on the hologram almost went unnoticed, the slightest hint to movement within their general radius. Keith froze, his eyes locked onto that spot he was sure he just saw movement on. Red floated with the momentum of their turn, spinning slowly on her axis.

Keith waited. 

Nothing. 

He waited one moment longer. 

_Something._

Keith bent forward, breath caught in his throat. Unblinking, he watched the screen as a singular, tiny dot emerged from the sea of red. That was definitely something, and it was definitely sentient. Swallowing his initial fear, Keith gripped Red and guided her forward once more. 

The window before him offered no hint to his quarry. He only had his map to go off of, an inkling of suspicion that settled in the back of his throat and refused to budge. He kept himself behind that dot, tailing it as slowly as he dared, as quickly as he could. 

The dot led him out deeper, farther away from the minefield. Red began to nudge at him, urging him to turn around and go elsewhere.

 _This is too dangerous to on your own._

“Yeah.”

 _Go back._

“Not yet.” 

Keith urged her forward. Red complied with the softest of grunts, sending them through the air in a delicate spiral, past the errant debris that floated around them. Minefield turned to junkyard, and junkyard turned to stones the size of half an Earth. Clustered around each other, it was nearly impossible to navigate between them. Some were broken, sending their jagged pieces Keith's way and threatening to bump against Red's hull. 

Yet the dot continued to blink on the screen, moving around, between, and over the stones. Keith knew he was going to be in some shit, if he kept going like this. His white-knuckled grip persisted nevertheless, and he and Red kept forward. 

It wasn't long before the dot just suddenly vanished. Keith ground Red to a halt, her subtle growl his only resistance. It wasn't like he knew much about the outer reaches of space, and the things that lived there, but it wasn't like something at _all_ to just up and vanish. That kind of shit just didn't happen. Not like that. Unless... 

Keith's heart hammered into his throat. That comet. Allura had elaborated on it a bit, describing how it was used to make the lions, yes, but there had been more. 

_Interdimensional travel,_ she had said. _It's how they use the wormholes, yes. But there were more...hints of opening up rifts to other worlds entirely. It had happened, once upon a time. I was too young to remember, but Coran described it as something terrible. Monsters came through the rift, threatening destruction..._

Keith blinked, biting his lip. It couldn't be that simple, despite the warning signs. There had to be more. There had to be a fluke. Yet his mind stretched itself in ways he'd only favored in fantastical, sci-fi ways, and maybe, just maybe... 

“What's going on here, Red?” 

A purr. 

“Something more?” 

Silence. 

Something more. Keith looked around, leaning forward to peer out of the window. Red looked where he looked, scanning for signs of something off, something odd. All around them were just plain old browned stones, rounded from whatever the hell rubbed against them out here. Once more, all was quiet, not even for the beep of something moving on the screen. 

Defeated, Keith went back to the castle. 

Saving the chastising comments about continuing to stay out of communications range, Keith told Allura and Coran of what had happened. The words slipped from his mouth one way or the other, unwanted at best. It was something he didn't think much would come of anyway, and it was a something he wanted to keep to himself. But he told those hopeful eyes what had happened, and they murmured about it for some days past that. 

An event gone forgotten, truth be told. Keith wielded Black and Red with the ease of a sixteen-year-old just behind the wheel. Black was needed for bigger battles, the kind that would require the blade from Red to cut through the masses of mindless Galran drones. Red was used for stealth, having been worked on and modified by Pidge to turn invisible, like her lion. Pidge had an affinity for Red. It was a shame Red wouldn't let her in. 

They trudged on, a wayward team of arguing teenagers that spit at each other over trivial details in the plans. Pidge wanted to do this with her lion, carve a way around the planet and enter from the backside and creep up from there. Lance wanted to fight them head-on, show them who was boss, and take back the planet underneath Galran rule in a blaze of Voltron-won glory. Keith wanted to go to the source, the nearest Galran base that commanded the immediate troops in their area. Hunk wanted nothing to do with any of the arguing, at all. Neither did Coran. 

Allura tried to lead, as best as she could. 

When push came to shove, they ultimately had to work together on something. So they incorporated a little bit of everything into future plans: if the Galra were far and few, and too far away from main command, then they'd go to the source; if they were strategic, pressed against something that would prove hard to hit them head on, they'd take Pidge's route of stealth; if the Galra fleets were small and weak and easily picked apart, they'd go head on with Lance and Hunk in the lead. 

The arguing cut itself down to a minimum after that, a welcome respite to the almost-near-constant hissing and spitting and rude comments muttered underneath each other's breath. Keith really _did_ try to get along and play nice, but sometimes it was just hard. 

Really hard. 

Eventually, in the end, it all worked out enough that actually _helping_ planets became more of a thing. Their current target was a planet known as Dzaemillic, an old trading hub that Coran recognized from back in his day. Obviously changed, but too much so, it waited for them in a dying galaxy. It had become a rose, tugging its neighboring galactic cluster of cosmos in for the ride, hanging onto what life it could while the star at its middle raged its final song. 

Keith gazed out over at the star, its flaming crests looping from the surface and lashing out into the void around it. 

“It's a shame,” Coran sighed over their helmets, “this galaxy was a hub of trade and information. If we're to succeed, we'll have to find the citizens of the planet a new home. This will be unfit for any sort of living by the end of the deca-phoeb.”

“I'm sure we'll manage. We all know how much the ladies love Lance.” The smugness in his voice dripped into their ears, and Keith rolled his eyes. 

“They'll be running in the other direction when they see you, I'm sure.” 

“Hey!” 

Keith was glad they couldn't see the smirk on his lips. 

Scouting the premises of the galaxy proved effortless. Pidge and Keith rounded the edges, and Lance and Hunk kept near the planet they had their eyes on. They awaited the orders to attack, but after some searching, some few dozen times of circling in place to find the source of the festered, purple infection, there was...nothing.

Where they had originally thought were thousands of Galra to occupy the planet, there were...barely any. The last few straggling ships chased them with what they had, and Keith rounded them up enough to fire at them with Red's cannons. Black had been left behind, to give off the guise that Voltron was incomplete, that Black was lost somewhere to space still, but there was no one to prove it to by the time they landed on the planet. 

“Okay,” Pidge said, “I'm not saying this is weird, but this is weird.” 

“Dude, I agree. It's like the Galra just gave up. Maybe because the galaxy's dying?” Hunk rubbed at the back of his neck, looking around the drab market they'd found themselves in. Keith found himself reminiscent of the occasional cyberpunk game he'd poked at, the pit of a swelling guilt growing in his stomach as All Thoughts Led to Shiro.

“I guess it just means we're done here,” he grunted, clearing his throat to hide the crack in his voice. He wanted to leave, and thankfully, the others seemed like they wanted to, too. Being stared at by the planet's inhabitants just left them feeling...sleazy. There was no gratefulness in their eyes, no promise of celebrated liberation that Allura had kept promising them.

“We're coming back, Allura,” Keith said, reaching out to grab Lance by the wrist. He'd had his eyes on some alien, some girl with six eyes and enormous horns on either side of her head. Each eye glimmered a different oily color in the neon orange lights of the crowded street, and quite frankly, Keith could already see the images of a disemboweled Lance being found in the back alley. 

Voluptuous figure or not, her maw opened wide enough to swallow both Keith and Lance whole. It looked like a smile? 

It was enough to finally deter Lance back Keith's way. 

“Are you sure?” Allura asked, her tone thoughtful as it hummed in their ears. “I think I'd have you all do some reconnaissance. The more information we can gather as to why this corner of the galaxy is so sparse with Galra, the better. They might know something we don't.” 

The receptor clicked, and Keith heaved, bit back his sigh before he could let it all out. 

“...You heard her,” he finally muttered, sweeping his gaze over the other three. “Let's see what we can find out, I guess. Meet back here in an hour, or something. And be _civil_ with the locals.”

Keith bit out the command at Lance, whose stony-faced expression was all he saw before it swung around and disappeared into a crowd. Hunk trailed off somewhere with Pidge, leaving Keith on his own. His boot dragged against the gravel with a groan, and he rubbed at the back of his neck as he wandered into the depths of the city. 

The farther in he went, the shadier it all got. Alleys were barely lit, full of glimmering eyes watching him from their darkened depths. Keith could feel them picking him apart to the bone, and he shuddered as he swore he heard the shift of something slithering along the walls. Self-consciously, he raised his arm and gave his armpit a good whiff. He needed a shower. He was sure he probably smelled delicious to an alien nose. 

The few curious locals Keith got to talk to were manageable, at least. There was one in particular with a goat's face, if a goat had black fur and long, oval eyes. Like seriously, they were _long,_ from the forehead down to the nose. Keith had a hard time meeting them.

The very kind man told him that the Galra just didn't seem to care about their corner of things, though. They never got much attention, and what Galra did show up just seemed to be mindless drones, searching for something. They never seemed to find their mark, and just hung uselessly in space, until one day, they were just gone. 

He blinked, laughed, and Keith quickly bade him thanks and farewell. 

It took a few more encounters of the same conversation before one girl finally offered something different. Her skin was bright white, with blue veins pressed up against her chest, her arms, and up into her neck. She was mostly humanoid, missing a nose, and speaking with a voice inside of Keith's head instead of actually using the thin mouth that simply smiled at him the entire time. 

_I think they think they're being clever. I can see them, you know. The Galra. They don different uniforms in darkened shades of their race's usual banners. They seem to hang out in the shadows, and they disappear out into the atmosphere a lot. But they always come back here, into an alley at the center of the city._

She gestured down a darker road, where the orange lights turned green and flickered against blackened pavements and greyed-out buildings. _If you wait there, one will surely return and show you the way._

“Thank you,” Keith said, his wariness melting instead to the core of his stomach. The girl was nicer than the last few suspicious-looking individuals. But when their goodbye was paramount and they said their final word, Keith wasn't even sure she had been real. 

The spot she'd been standing was empty in the blink of an eye, and turning on his heel to glean where she'd gone offered him nothing. Nothing but an emptying street as the purple sky overhead slowly grew darker. 

“I'll be late,” Keith said, muttering to the side of his helm. “You guys can go back. I think I have a lead. I'd like to check it out before I go.” 

Hunk instantly groaned his gratifications, and Pidge was compliant. There was some scoffing and arguing with Lance, but Keith could rest easy as he watched the sky for the brilliant streaks of color the lions left behind. They arced into the atmosphere, shining bright until they and the lions were gone altogether. 

Keith really _was_ by himself at that point. He grabbed the dagger from home as opposed to his bayard, clutching its hilt and rubbing his thumb against the glossed curve of the opal set into its pewtered metal. 

The night came and Keith still found himself waiting by that alley. He'd found a tower of crates to hide behind, to settle down against and take a moment to breathe. The occasional alien that came stumbling by didn't pay him any attention, and the watchful eyes from the alleys before didn't seem keen on finding him in his vulnerability. 

It was a lulled sense of comfort, but there was still the uneasiness that pressed against his ribs and threatened to suffocate. The tension in his shoulders was high, rendering him rigid as he watched the mouth of the alley as still as a graveyard statue poised over the headstones. 

Keith could feel Red pushing at him, like a wave. 

_It's late._

Keith knew that. 

_Later than you said you'd be out. I've seen nothing, and neither have you._

Keith knew that, too. 

He ignored her, the childish course of roads to take. But he'd finally had a lead, and he wasn't about to let it go. Not until he'd scraped his teeth over the opportunity to decide if it was worth sinking into or not. That girl had mentioned the Galra specifically, and if they were being shady, and he had the means to shut something more down...

Keith bit his lip. There was going to be something here, he _knew_ that. It was too much of coincidence with the lack of Galra in the galaxy, with that weird encounter in the minefields from the other night, and what that girl had said. There had to be something, and Keith's fingers needed to be wrapped around that something to bring back home. 

Keith clutched his dagger a little more firmly in his hands, breath bated as he promised himself ten more minutes. Red purred her displeasure, but her presence was gone as soon as it had come. Keith breathed her out, a quick puff of air that frosted the glass inside of his helmet. 

Two minutes gone. 

Three. 

Six minutes down. 

Keith was growing impatient. 

Eight. 

Nine. 

_There._

A furtive man dressed in skintight purple, glowing lights like LEDs set into his chest. Keith couldn't see his face, covered by the mask underneath the hood draped over his head. A tail protruded from his rear, but despite even that, the height and build (and color, to be honest) all bled Galra. Keith wrinkled his nose, sucked in a breath, and held it as he watched. 

He watched the Galra look around, his shoulders stiff, a weapon in his own hand. He could tell something was off. Good man. 

But Keith didn't budge, knees bent, back pressed to the crate he was propped against. He continued to watch over his shoulder, ready to jump up at any moment. A moment that didn't seem too keen on coming. 

The Galra continued to watch the alley, his grip tight around an all-too-familiar knife. The glint of neon lighting upon its blade distracted Keith, but not enough so that he missed the Galra disappear into the alley. 

Literally _disappear._

Keith watched in shocked disbelief as the air seemingly rippled around the Galra, folding over him in a physical manifestation of an invisible blanket. One moment he was there, and the next, he was just gone. Keith found himself left behind, and utterly dumbfounded. 

Red rumbled. 

Keith ignored her. 

He got to his feet, each footfall muffled against the stones. His breathing was quick, barely allowed, as he approached the mouth of the alley. Arm outstretched, he reached for it, expecting to feel something there. His mind whirled with the implausibilities of such a thing, and...

And yet he felt nothing. He fell through and into the alley, catching himself on a foot before whirling around on his heel. Nothing. But there had been something. That Galra proved as much. But how did it do what it had just done? 

Keith sucked a sharp breath between his teeth. He held it, rolled it over his tongue, before looking to the ground and letting it out in one short, exasperated motion. He was due a trip back to the castle, but leaving with the itch of something right where he stood just didn't sit right with him. His stomach churned as the silence pressed against his ears, and he spun in place, desperately searching for an in. An out. 

An in between. 

The silence neared deafening. The lights seemed to dim, yet Keith kept his head tilted, his posture poised. 

It was only upon a stiff breeze that he heard it: two voices, hushed, conversing. 

Keith swung around, hand on his bayard. There was nothing to be seen, no source for the sound to be coming from. It was like eavesdropping through a wall. He held his breath, and caught the tiniest of syllables: 

_I wasn't._

_Good._

But there was a pause. A pregnant silence, flush with the roar of blood in Keith's ears. He strained, forced himself to relax and take a deep breath, and he held it, slowing his heartbeat's hammer against his breastbone. 

_Someone's there._

Keith heard the words as bluntly as he felt the blow hit the back of his head.

_____

Keith felt himself slumped against the floor before he properly woke. There was a groan itching at the back of his throat, a cough that jerked him awake. A fluid in his mouth budded against his teeth, and he squeezed it out between them and shot the dusky, red saliva to the ground. He wiped at the corner of his mouth, heavy eyelids fluttering open against bright, purple lights, attempting to assess the situation. 

With his weight propped against a not-too-shaky elbow, he managed to turn an aching head around the room. It was just a room. A single door before him, but the offensive purple of the lighting had his heart racing. 

Galra. 

He shot up onto a knee, warily balanced as the world keened. He gripped the side of his head, forcing himself into an upright position as he looked around himself. A single room, with a single door, and no way out but to walk forward. 

As these things went, just walking out never worked. But as he wandered closer to the door, it shot open with the faintest hiss. Revealed to him was an empty hallway, and with wide eyes, shoulders slouched in confusion, he slowly leaned past the edge and looked out. 

Nothing. 

Seemed to be the story of his life at the moment. But he digressed, rubbing at the back of his head with a groan. There was something fishy about the situation, a downright, obvious feeling that licked at his instinct and kept him on guard. This was on purpose, because there was no way the Galra would just leave him unsupervised and free to leave at any moment. There were no mistakes to be made in their systematic oppression. And Keith really didn't like the cards he'd been dealt. 

He held them close as he wandered out, hands outstretched, fingers curled into fists. Each step was steady and careful, and he was momentarily grateful for the wound dealt to his head being the only one. It left him with a migraine that blossomed out underneath his forehead, but it was a feeling easily ignored as he kept a steady pace along the hallway. 

The purple lights, dim as they were, guided his way. All Keith could hear was his own breathing, his steadying heart as he walked down the twisting, seemingly endless hallways. Nearly fed up and determined he wasn't going to find anything, he skidding steps finally gave way to the prick of noise to his ears. 

Voices. That was a good sign, maybe. He inhaled deeply and turned to make his way towards them, careful and cautious. 

“The blade still remains a mystery, Kolivan.” 

Silence. 

“Only those of our own possess the blade. You know this.” 

More silence. 

Keith pressed himself against the wall, turning slightly to cast his gaze over the corner. Four galra, all masked and donned up in skin-tight jumpsuits were gathered in a circle, discussing...well, Keith, presumably. 

“I suppose we'll find out, when he awakes. How much longer is that going to be, anyway?” 

“Not much.” 

They all fell quiet as Keith saw one point towards him. It seemed the ruse was up, and he felt tempted to turn and flee back towards his room. But the galra all turned to face him, and deciding he had nowhere else to go, Keith just walked out. 

Keith found himself upon a catwalk of scrutiny. No eyes could be seen, but they all turned to him with a meaning deeper than the universe's purpose. Keith felt himself quickly shrink underneath them, but resilience kept his face turned upwards, aimed at what he assumed was the ring leader. He wasn't dead yet. There was still time for formalities. 

“What is your name?” 

The voice came from the one with the braid, the one who towered above the rest. Two flanked Keith while the remaining stayed by the talking one's side, and it was all he could do to keep from clawing out of his skin. 

“Keith.” 

“How did you come across this blade?” 

A blunt question, accompanied by the reveal of flashing silver in his hand. It was _Keith's_ blade, and he patted his hip in a smothered panic. He quit immediately as the other three galra made to advance toward him. 

“It was given to me,” he said, slowly. “When I was younger.” 

“That's not possible,” the galra to his right perked up. “The blade has only been with us! It's not-” 

“Hold your words, Venkar.” 

The braided galra cut the other one off, his voice deepened and stern. “That is not our primary concern. Our primary concern is if this one knows who we _are.”_

The very tone of his voice sent a dollop of ice down Keith's spine. All three of the galra stepped closer, and the one who had been talking held Keith's knife out, against him. 

“Tell us,” he said. “Do you know our name?” 

“No.” 

Keith bit the word out, letting it hit the galra in the face like a stone. Succumbing to the feeling of a caged animal wasn't the best approach to getting Keith to want to be cooperative. He tried to step back, away from the encroaching galra, but the one to his left grabbed him by the bicep. Soon both were in his grasp, and just a single hand managed to hold Keith in place. The galra's tail came out from behind him, wrapping itself tight around his ankles and rendering him immobile. 

Keith struggled, hands writhing in their bonds. 

“Tell me again,” the braided galra said, “do you _know_ our names?” 

“No! I don't know anything about this!” 

Keith squirmed, jerking his shoulders to wrench himself free of the galra's hand. It was futile, only rewarding Keith with a exasperated forehead and matted hair. He glared at the galra before him from underneath his bangs, mauve eyes sharp and pointed as he stood his ground. 

“I'm with Voltron.” 

The galra went quiet, on obvious undertone to the atmosphere as they looked between each other. They were thinking, contemplating. Finally, the galra that had been holding him loosened his grip. 

Keith broke free, stumbling forward. He squared his shoulders, turning to face the galra with tension rippling through his muscles like a static. “Give it back.” 

He held his hand out towards the blade. It was a demand that seemed to shock even the galra before him, sending the one with the tail into a stance to grab Keith again. 

“Not yet,” braided-leader said, holding his arm out. “Not yet.” 

There was scrutiny to his words, an unseen expression that Keith could picture all too clearly in his mind. He was being studied. He was going to be toyed with. 

“If you want it back,” came the predicted words, “you'll have to prove to us you can earn it back. Only galra can wield these blades. If you can prove to us you have our blood, then you can have it back.” 

Silence followed the ransom, and Keith swallowed hard. 

“Do we have a deal?” 

“Yes.”

_____

Allura wasn't happy with the agreement. Kolivan wasn't happy with letting Keith get in contact with her, to even let her know what was going on. Really, it was Red who'd started trying to tear the place down before anyone was convinced to let him do it. An annoyance on Keith's part, but even being so far away, donning instead the suit of a Blade of Marmora, he could feel her rumbling roar still residing inside his chest. It licked like a flame towards the base of his skull, a quiet threat that nothing better befall him in his time there. 

A time in somewhere he'd never expected to be. The Blade of Marmora had turned out to be an ally of sorts, renegade galrans inside of the empire who were dedicated to tearing it down from the inside out. Bits and pieces of their story came out to Keith slowly, a trickle of information as he fought his way through their trials. 

_Knowledge or death_ was their motto. Knowledge or death was their ultimatum. Knowledge is what Keith pursued. A knowledge that still kept itself at Keith's fingertips, no matter how hard or how far he reached for it. The only upside to anything was Kolivan's trust, his aid to Voltron when Keith was desperately needed. 

Three paladins couldn't save a universe. Four paladins could barely save a galaxy. Four paladins, a castle, and a group of rogue galran soldiers stood a better chance against the test of the empire's might, for as slim as their chances might be. 

Four paladins, a ten-thousand-year-old princess and her adviser, and a small army of galra were all it took to gain a foothold on the turning tides of the war. An outlook to an inevitability that Keith would never see in the end, anyway. 

But that was something far off in Keith's future, and his present was decided by the blade currently held out to him, shining as brightly as it ever did underneath the desert sun. 

“You've awoken it,” Kolivan said. His voice was stern, laced with an authority that managed to bend Keith to its will, like the blade that struck home at his neck and severed jugular and muscle alike. Kolivan had tamed Keith with an almost-death, a promise that he would do it again. 

But Kolivan stood before Keith, his attire more ceremonial than the others. Black silks draped across his shoulders like butterfly's wings, fingers pricked with filed, polished talons, he held the blade out to Keith with another silent promise in the wake of his words. 

“Take it, Keith. And know your worth.” 

“Weighted,” he pointed out, dryly. Kolivan shifted, and Keith saw the flash of a smirk. It eased the tension in Keith's shoulders, made it easier to drape his fingertips along the silken metal of his old blade. It had been polished, in its absence. It was different now, glowed brightly underneath Keith's touch, and it was heavier in his hand. 

Keith looked into its polished surface, noting features worn and rugged and scarred. He'd been left with a cut across the left brow, one that trailed diagonally down to just barely grace the right corner of his mouth. He quirked his lips up into it, rubbed it roughly with his free hand. 

_You have the same eyes as your father,_ he'd been told. 

The room was silent as Kolivan stepped back, watching as Keith let the blade drop to his side. In tandem it shrunk, back to the dagger he was used to. Back to the dagger that reminded him of his long forgotten family. He wrapped his fingers around the hilt, around the galran symbol that had come to be home these days. 

“The Blade is now with you. You are one of us, Keith. Walk in Marmora's shadows, and may they ever guide you.” 

Kolivan's stiff posture shrunk into something casual. The first Keith had ever seen, since his first day in their base with them. He stepped closer once the somewhat ceremonious crowd dissipated, and his words dipped low into something only meant for them. 

“I would require a meeting with Allura. There is the matter of your blood she would know about, and another matter of something important that I know she would find of use.” He looked imploringly into Keith's eyes. Kolivan towered over him, and Keith fit in the space he carved out for the both of them well. 

“Of course,” Keith said, flicking his gaze towards the far wall. “She'll be happy to see me again, I'm sure. It should give us an opportunity to all sit around.”

Kolivan nodded, touching the palm of his hand to Keith's shoulder, squeezing it once. 

He left Keith to stand there, blade still in hand, the other galra fading into his background.

_____

Learning he had galra in his veins settled on his shoulders like Shiro's jacket had. Keith remembered the first time he'd felt it there. It was a late night in the library, and he'd been all alone. Or so he'd thought, anyway. 

He woke up at 4:28. Keith remembered looking at the time on his phone like he'd just done it the night before. He leaned his head back against Black's headrest, chewing his lip as he remembered those blue numbers against the black of his wallpaper. 

After the realization that it was late hit him, he leaned back, and the weighted cover of Shiro's jacket slipped from his shoulders. Keith made to grab it, look it over. _Shirogane,_ he remembered reading. Black letters embroidered on a white patch, set against the left breast. 

Shiro had been sitting beside him, his own tired eyes looking over the text of a book even thicker than Keith's. 

_“Hey,”_ he had said. _“Wanna head back?”_

Keith stared out into the space before him, his hands limp on Black's handles. He could still remember what Shiro sounded like, tender tones whispered softly against his ear. Only the most gentle, the most honeyed words and reassurances for his star cadet. 

Shiro's blanket settled like the gentle weight of something known, something familiar, something gained and loved. 

Keith's galran heritage settled with the same weight, though the comfort was a voided warranty. He'd been a plugged-in spark that exploded and frayed, and there was nothing left except the numbing emptiness that not even answers of his missing past could answer. Yet Keith donned it nonetheless, the purple suit clinging to his form and hugging him with the purpose of a lover whispering there was nothing else except this. 

Because there wasn't. 

Allura had resigned herself to the fact that there were other paladins out there, waiting to be found. Keith would fill the shoes of two until they came to light, and then Keith would find himself back with the Blades, working in their shadows and keeping his distance from the group. 

_Whoa, you're galra?_

Hunk's words from not even an hour before still made him flinch. The expressions of the other five seared themselves into his mind, and Keith couldn't wish them away, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he closed his eyes. 

Allura's voice was taut. Her diplomacy out the window, she just barely managed to keep herself in line as Kolivan talked with her. The only reason the two hadn't been kicked out onto stardusted streets was for the fact that Kolivan trusted her with the information of their comet. 

The mere mention of the glimmering piece of space junk had Allura on her toes, suspicious but compliant. 

_But we've been looking everywhere for one. We'd know if we found it._

_Not everywhere._

_Then where did we miss?_

Even Keith still found himself surprised, underneath the bitter layer of dread that Allura had coated his faith in. Their base on Dzaemillic had been camouflaged, hidden, in a sense. All stuff Keith didn't really listen to as the base's nurse stitched a wound shut. But all he knew was that it was hidden, thanks to some cloaking technology or another. 

But Kolivan had gone on, describing how the very comet that Allura so feverishly sought was hidden inside the star that died at the galaxy's center. Keith watched it, curious, thoughtful, head tilted to the side. 

_We did it to hide it from Lotor._

_That's actually quite genius of you._

More talking. Loosened shoulders. Palatable trust. 

_Keith has told us you sought something similar, for a sixth lion. The star is due to collapse any quintant now. Would you be able to protect it, if we were to ensure its safety with you?_

Kolivan had struck gold. Despite what they were, what they _both_ were, Allura had agreed. Only thing that was left were the agreements, the meet-in-the-middles, all fun stuff that Keith had snuck out of, when he wasn't needed anymore. Allura had reassured him that he could stay, that he was still a welcome member of their little group, but Keith could see it in her eyes: he wasn't. 

With everyone else still unaware of what was going on, he had left. 

He hovered Black as close as he could to the star, shut down and unobtrusive as he borrowed the gravitational pull of the closest planet to the burning body. He watched it flare, he watched it writhe. He watched it with the knowledge that the entire galaxy had vacated. This was the end of their days, and Keith felt sour. He swallowed around it, face turned to the side. This could have happened to him. Could have happened to them. 

Keith kind of wished it had. 

Black purred, a softer, gentler noise than Red's voice. Black was different. Black was kinder. Black wrapped himself around Keith like Shiro's jacket, and he huffed, hard, the tears pricked at the corners of his eyes before he could stop them.

_____

They were able to keep track of the collapse of the star, right down to the very second. Plans were in motion, albeit hasty, swift ones. They were to go in at least six vargas before it was due to collapse, Pidge and Keith in the two smallest, swiftest lions. In and out, the comet settled between them through some telekinetic energy Pidge and Hunk had come up with. 

Keith mulled over the plan, mulled over the dangers, and found himself settled on thoughts of what the comet could do, _would_ do, instead. There was an inherent danger around the comet that Coran had warned them about. The comet was made of an unknown material, barely learned and still considered a mystery, despite Alfor's previous work and experiments. All they'd really known was that the comet the lions were forged from was sentient, almost, and that the comet had opened a great rift, in more ways than one. 

Keith chewed at the information. Keith thought long and hard on the fact that it was confirmed the comet could open rifts to other universes. After all, they'd seen it, right? They knew it was a possibility. It was a risk, a danger, one they'd wanted the paladins to avoid. 

But Keith breathed deep, forcing a calm over his thundering heart. 

His hands were on the steering module of one of the ship's escape pods, the route into the star mapped into its navigations. There was a secret for getting into the hidden base inside of the star, a pocket dimension the Blades had managed to sneak in there. A highly volatile thing within itself, but one that had managed to keep itself stable for observing. 

So Keith knew it was there. Keith knew it was safe enough to look, scout out and see what he was dealing with. So Keith went, on his own, with what little he had to call his own packed with him upon the ship. 

Keith followed the breadcrumbs. There would be three stars to the north that would serve as the guide inside the dimension. The line to follow to the exact entry point that would guarantee safety, and not burning to a crisp on the flames of the raging star. Keith found and followed them, keeping them at the corner of his eye as he coaxed himself forward. 

The ship was quiet. It left quietly, and the castle slumbered behind him, and he was able to make his leave unnoticed. Yet Keith didn't dare breathe until his next clue was upon him, the ripple on the surface of the star. He dimmed the glass at his front, making the star a little safer to look at, being this close to it. 

He stared patiently at the surface of the star, before he saw it. While the flames would flare and lick out into space one way, underneath the ripple, they'd go the opposite way. Nearly impossible to see unless you knew what you were looking for. 

Keith rolled his fingers along the handles and leaned forward, pushing inward. 

He watched as space melded to something brighter, rippling like the disturbed waves on a still pond. Inside of the star, the air was brighter, hotter, and the roar of the dying filled Keith's ears, even through the protective plating of his ship. Turbulence bounced it before Keith slid completely through, and thrown forward in his seat, he was pushed into the pocket the galra had so meticulously hidden away. 

Before him lie their treasure, a comet the size of nearly Black himself. Polished surfaces mirrored the swirling fires around them, hidden and safe inside of the base built around the comet. Keith finally let go of the breath he'd been holding, coasting closer to the comet, towards an entryway that looked big enough for his ship. 

Closer inspection revealed to him the hollow abandonment that had been left to decay on the base. Rust lined the edges of metalwork, and the comet itself had come to lean against the base, crushing into it. All was eerily still, and Keith felt the flutter of something like fear brush against his esophagus. It was almost enough to make him turn around and go back home. But stubborn relentlessness (and a splash of sheer, stubborn idiocy) kept him moving forward. 

Keith opted to stay inside of his ship as he moved into the base proper, all intents focused on the purpose of docking. 

But the rock of his ship, the rumble that juddered the handles from his hands found him dealing with something else entirely.


	2. Chapter 2

The blaring sirens in his ears were the first obvious sign something had gone wrong. Keith's heart hit the roof of his mouth as he looked around, fingers grasping the controls as widened eyes gazed at red error messages flickering across his screens. They started to sway and elongate, strikes of glitched lines dashing through their alien-worded **WARNING** s. 

He was panicking. He would admit he was panicking right now. 

He grabbed the handles as hard as he could, attempting a pull to get the ship to brake and still. To his chagrin, there was a tug that fought his every movement, and the controls were yanked from his hands over and over again, sending him lurching forward with the already-rocking ship and threatening to toss him from his seat. 

Swallowing a curse, Keith's hands flew to the dashboard. Truth be told, he didn't have a single clue on how to work the nuances of this particular ship. He'd only bothered getting familiar with Red and Black, and even their inner workings were a mystery he doubted he could conquer in the next decade. He didn't have Pidge's versatility with the machines, and he was kicking himself in the ass until it was sore for sleeping on the opportunities to be with her and learn what he could. 

A surge sent the ship over, capsizing it nearly onto its side. Keith hit the side of his chair with a low grunt, lunging forward to grab the handles and clench hard on his teeth. 

_Just stay calm._

Something akin to Shiro's voice, Shiro's words, echoed in his ear. Advice hashed out over and over again until tongues bled back at the academy, but it was a sort of golden rule on the off chance anything went wrong. 

_Not like it would, but, you know. Just in case, right? You gotta keep cool. And you take the brakes like this..._

Keith sucked in a deep breath, forcing his trembling fingers to calm, to recline back towards his torso. The handles felt like steel poles welded in cement, but push came to shove, and there was less the immediate fear of being plunged into an endless spiral than there was the view outside of his window. 

The white-hot insides of the star seemed to be swallowing itself, turning everything inside out before Keith's very eyes. Everything warped, and there was a frizz to the edge of the star that formed a border turned black, eating itself into a dark void even deeper than that of space. Keith's ship sunk into it like blood oozed from a flesh wound, and the handles were yanked from his grip once more. 

Turbulence rocked the ship like a boat during a storm, and it was everything Keith had in his straining arms to hold fast to the controls and just keep them as steady as he could hope to. He watched instead as the air around him rippled and gripped at his ship, watched lights flicker between the red of his interior, white and blue and sometimes green, and he heard the screeching of over-heated pipes fill his ears and create an unholy matrimony of noise against his drums. 

Everything he'd been looking at was gone. It left disbelief layered in shock dumped into the pit of his stomach, pushed to the side as something to worry about when everything wasn't falling apart. Nothing was falling apart _yet,_ but the unrelenting shudder and scraping screech of metal against metal around him made him believe something was breaking off into whatever he'd happened to float into. 

Just when everything had hit its point, the noise reached what Keith could only presume to be its maximum and the metal hulling of his ship started to bend inward, it stopped. 

One final shudder, one last thud, and Keith felt his vessel pushed forward like a bullet from an exit wound. He slammed into the handles, crying out in mixed shock and pain as the edge bit into the skin below his eye. Blood dripped from the torn gash, and he held the heel of his palm tight to the fresh wound as he leaned slowly back in his seat. 

He pressed himself tight against the flimsy cushioning, breathing hard, eyes turned to the smoking ceiling of his cockpit. The sound had cut itself off, but the red still layered the inside of his ship like a sunset, and the screens at his dash demanded attention for damage he didn't think he had the supplies to fix at the moment. 

One glance out the window told him he was back in normal space, swirling colors of nebulae streaking against a lightened black like watercolors leaking on a page. 

The inside of the vessel cried out for help in its own mechanical way, dragging Keith's attention back to the interior. Hands worked at a metal outer casing at his feet, prying it loose from screws to reveal the inner workings of laced wiring that frizzled and showered their sparks onto Keith's arms. 

He brushed them away with a grimace, reaching in to make sure his oxygen supply wasn't damaged. It wasn't, but there was a deeper-hued smoke billowing from the engine compartment that gave way to some concern. He coughed the smoke from his lungs, and very carefully put the slab of metal back over its hole. 

It was fine. 

For now.

With eyes back on the dashboard, he attempted to send a distress signal to the castle instead. 

Nothing. 

Surely a fluke to be had with the damage that had suddenly happened to his ship, Keith tried again as he shifted in his seat. His head bumped uncomfortably against where the metal had collapsed, and he found himself hunched over in his seat, ribs folding in on themselves as he peered out the window, cautiously. 

His first sign that something was off should have been the Blade of Marmora's base. It hung outside the star now, lifeless and dark and orbiting the celestial body that had long since died. Keith's first conclusion was to come to the fact that it had caved in on itself while Keith was in there, and the base had...somehow managed to escape. Somehow.

Static erupting from his attempted call to Allura caught his attention, dragging his previous thoughts to an empty silence within the pin-needle noise. He listened hard, for any leftover frequencies that might give him a voice, but...

Nothing. 

Keith sighed, hard. He dragged a hand down his face, the coarse leather of his glove catching on the healing wound underneath his eye. It ruptured again, and Keith slammed the side of his fist against the arm of his chair. Frustration bubbled like a heartburn, and he had to physically turn away from his non-responsive controls to root through his belongings, a momentary distraction in his suffocating silence. 

The ship had come with a first aid kit, set into the walling behind his chair. He fumbled for it after a harsh wrench of the compartment's door, and medicinal technology of the alien variety was to be found inside the sleek metal boxing. Three-pointed needles and bandages that glimmered in opalescent hues awaited him inside; luckily for him and his reckless ass, he knew how to work around half the stuff decently enough. 

He grabbed a small bottle, unopened and full of a clear substance, and spooned the gel onto a fingertip before turning back to the dashboard. 

Still nothing. 

He grunted, swabbing the viscous material onto his bruising cut. He nudged the controls with a knee, and only rewarded himself with an agonized creak of metal resounding from somewhere on the outside hull of his ship. 

“Shit.” 

He sighed again, cradling the uninjured cheek against the palm of a hand, rubbing it at it punishingly. 

Think. He just had to think. 

A moment's contemplation resulted in the bright idea to leave his distress signal on, letting it float through his immediate space in the hopes that _someone_ would answer him. In the mean time, he slid from his chair, pressing himself close to the metal walling that barred him from his ship's engine components. 

He tossed the metal covering to the back of the ship, breathing deep with shut eyes. He'd never been terribly huge on small spaces; ironic, considering nothing but small spaces awaited him in the seats of piloted cruisers and warships, but that was a different kind of tight. This was a tightened enclosure filling with smoke, smothering him and rendering him teary-eyed as he shoved himself in with the engines and its complicated wiring. 

Braided cords resembled vines in a complex jungle, and quite frankly, Keith felt like he had entered one as he looked around. His engine was threatening sparks, a ransom note for for the fire that was sure to ensue if he didn't figure something out. 

A forced swear popped from his lips as he yanked a plug free from the engine, watching as the immediate sparking died into something less worrisome. He yanked a few more cords from their melting repositories, before the tight space _tightened_ and he yanked himself from the dwindling compartment. 

He sucked in a breath, propping his weight against the edge of the chair. Static rained down on him like a hesitant rain, and he listened, closely, for...

Nothing, still. 

Or was it? 

Something more seemed to flicker in the white noise, and Keith clambered back into his chair, palms rubbed against his thighs. He leaned closer to the dashboard (because that would help him hear better, right?) and listened, eyes squinted and drawn out to the flickering stars hundreds of years away. 

“An...y...ne...oard?” 

The static buzz didn't help the already gravelly voice, and while it wasn't the rill of Allura's chastising tone, it was something. 

“I'm here!” Keith called out, slamming whatever button that was still responsive to open his line. “I'm here, can you hear me?” 

A moment ticked by...

“Y..eah! What's the matter?” 

The static broke, and a harsh, almost nasal voice erupted from Keith's intercom. He winced, unsure of the unfamiliarity of the voice, but it would have to do. “I'm broken down,” he said, casting his gaze to the outside, searching for any evidence of his would-be helpers. “If I don't get out soon, it's gonna blow, and I'm gonna be fucked.” 

Another moment of silence. 

“We'll be there shortly.” 

_We._

Keith swallowed the rising apprehension, deciding to just take whatever came his way, one step at a time. He'd wrangled his way from worse. He closed the line in the mean time, confident his rescuers had gleaned his coordinates. Keith could only hope they stayed true to their word; the errant pop of something exploding underneath the hull of his ship made his skin crawl.

Luck seemed to be on his side: Keith noted a rogue ship floating into his view, powered along by the spluttering of its own engines. The ship's jets died, and it was with renewed vigor Keith hurriedly gathered his things up. He watched as patiently as he could manage as the other ship coasted closer, parked itself against the side of his vessel, and paused. The back docking door parted slowly from the main frame, and two cloaked figures in masks similar to Keith's gestured to him. 

Keith opened his own vessel, and readied himself at the edge. One powerful push from his thighs, and he was sailing the open space between ships, poised and ready to land in the receiving one. Keith kept his wary gaze on the two, noting their weapons held tight in six-fingered grips. 

Weapons they kept lowered as he finally hit the metal flooring of their ship, gasping softly at the thud of contact. 

“Closing,” grunted one of the aliens, smacking a button near their cargo boxes. Keith watched as the docking door shut with a quiet hissing, settling tight and sealing itself at the floor in an airtight vacuum. The other two waited a moment before removing their helmets, and Keith had to admit, he was surprised to find one decidedly more _furry_ than the other. Then again, it just looked like he had more facial hair than the other. It was colored blue, and the look in his eye made Keith decide not to linger on any of it for too long. 

“Thanks,” he said, cautiously filling the tense silence. “If it weren't for you, I'd be, uh, do-” 

“Who are you?” 

The bluer alien cut Keith off with a sharp jab to the chest. The butt of his weapon dug in against his breastbone, and Keith knocked it away indignantly. “Excuse me?” 

“Who _are_ you, and who do you work for?” 

The smaller of the two was more purple, and Keith might have found some kind of begrudging amusement in this if it weren't for the fact he was suddenly being threatened. 

“Listen-” 

“Show yourself!” 

The purple alien knocked the tip of his weapon to Keith's mask. Keith pushed it away, his growing frustration giving rise to a coarse tone. 

“My name is _Keith,_ ” he spat, letting his mask dissolve in an array of electromagnetic particles. “I was a paladin of Voltron. I'm not your ene-” 

The blue alien knocked the end of its weapon against Keith's stomach. 

“Says the one in galran attire. Explain yourself!” 

“Do I _look_ galra to you?” Keith spat, his fuse sparked and worn. His voice was husky, scraping coals from burnt rails and making the smaller alien flinch. 

“No, but-” 

“I need to get back to my base. You're resistance fighters, right?” 

Silence. 

The blue alien looked to the purple, and there was a thickened tension between them that, quite frankly, Keith could understand. But his patience was waning, and he got to his feet with an irritable sigh. 

“Do you know Princess Allura?” 

“We do,” the purple alien answered, “but she's never made no mention of any _Keith_ before, though.” He hissed the word like it was venom, and it would have been a slap to the cheek if Keith hadn't already been coming down from a temporary roid rage.

“I haven't exactly been a lasting paladin,” he offered, smacking the lingering weapon near his face away. The blue alien seemed reluctant to give Keith his autonomy, but he relented in the end. “I was on a mission to scout out something for her, but something's wrong. I need to see her.” 

The two looked between themselves, before glancing at Keith. They started a conversation in some alien tongue that sounded like rocks clicking together in a stream, leaving Keith to watch with growing frustration creasing his brow. 

“We can take you to her,” the purple alien finally offered, his skinny shoulders growing lax. “Lucky for you, our next stop is in that area of the quadrant.” 

Keith nodded, his shoulders keeping themselves squared and stiff. There was an air of something being not quite right, but that was a lingering suspicion he smothered with his mistrust for these two. Their weapons forgotten against the wall, Mr. Blue gestured for Keith to follow them to the front of their vessel. 

It was...a mess. The cockpit resembled more the dorms of teenage boys with sweat-stained armpits, trash littering the floor and paper strewn along the walls. Maps, coordinates, reminders. It smelled oddly sour, and Keith fought the urge to bring his mask up again. 

“Keith, you said?” Purple asked, seating himself down in the copilot's chair. He had a finger in a hole in the side of his head, twisting it around and making Keith's stomach churn in tandem. 

“Yeah. You?”

“I'm Lax, and that's Zrax.” 

Keith fought the urge to snort. 

“Patrolling, or...?” 

He'd never been good at the small talk. That was Allura's thing. Kolivan's, too. Lax merely shrugged, turning to the numerous, lazily blinking buttons and dials on his dash. 

“Supply run. The resistance doesn't run on hopes and dreams, you know.” 

Keith had a feeling that was meant to be a stab at where it hurts. The meaning was lost on him, though. 

“Anyway.” Lax tugged some dial to the right, and the ship came alive underneath them with a subtle thrum. “Go sit in the back with the cargo. Just don't touch any of the supplies. Keep yourself occupied. We'll be there in less than a quintant.” 

Keith's memory told him that, blissfully, quintant only meant a day. 

“Thanks,” he muttered. 

Lax turned around, waving a hand. Keith fought the urge to smack him upside the head, but violent tendencies wrought from irritable situations acted out were not conducive to the situation at large. He needed to find his way back to metaphorical home, so he could at least explain with some semblance of shame what had happened to Allura. 

He groaned as he hit the wall, his aching back sliding down the metallic ridges. The smooth glide of the vessel was a welcome one compared to the previous turmoil of his abandoned craft. He rubbed at his jaw as he gazed around his current compartment, obsidian looking boxes stacked to the ceiling and scattered through makeshift pathways. 

Keith stared at the dim lights overhead, their amber fluorescence washing over him and the cargo. They rocked, slightly, mimicking the calm buoyancy of a sea before the storm. Everything was quiet. 

Keith could breathe. Allura and Kolivan would come later. 

Introspection. 

It came, washing over Keith uncomfortably. Suddenly, he didn't feel so fine. He knew from the moment he'd stepped in his vessel, he should have stayed on the castle. They'd had a plan, and one meticulously thought through, one that couldn't go wrong in the way that Pidge's plans and Hunk's involvement didn't usually go wrong. 

He had been in safe hands. 

He was an idiot. 

Keith plucked at his hood, rolling a poignant sigh over his tongue and chewing at it. The glimpses of the outside world he'd managed to get looked different, looked off, and the stars didn't twinkle quite like how they had before he'd entered the star. It was like they'd been dropped and shattered, glued back together and misplaced. 

It was hard to describe. 

Keith stared at them, though. He looked at them instead of wallowing in self-idiocy. The names of stars of his past came to mind, UY Scuti and Betelgeuse, Vega and Antares, and he wondered if any of them had something that made them as distinctly human as the ones back home. He'd once spent an entire week straight, awake, memorizing star charts and the logic behind naming the closest celestial bodies to Earth in a way that made them familiar, personified. It hadn't made sense to him then, but Keith found the more he was out in the cold unfamiliarity of surrounding darkness, the more he came to understand why there was a subtle desperation in tacking mundane austerity to what had been out of reach. 

Keith remembered the star he'd bought. 

It was for shits and giggles. A star at the outer edges of what had just recently been named, little clusters of soon-to-be constellations that students at the garrison could pick up for a tidy twenty bucks. Or, at least, twenty was all Keith could afford then. He remembered eyeing the romantic bundle somewhat longingly, all one-fifty of it, and imagined surprising Shiro with the cheesy polyester bear it came with and the fancy, _so_ fancy gilded parchment document curled up in its paws, a piece of faux-rich paper declaring Keith's starstruck love spilled over the page in curled, tight letters, the form of a purchased star, all for Shiro. 

But Keith had done it anyway, his twenty all or nothing. He'd bought the star and had forgotten about it, until it showed up in Shiro's hands, some five months later down the road. It wasn't a bill, nor was it a reminder, and Keith remembered the way his shoulders stiffened at Shiro's off-handed remark over the flimsy letter in his hand. 

_Were you expecting something? You got something certainly more oblong than usual._

Keith had answered with something about a dildo. He couldn't help the laugh as it puffed past his lips, but Keith's gaze grew somber, unwavering from the golden glow above him. 

_Oh, right. I forgot about this. I bought a star..._

_Oh?_

_Yeah, for you. Iota six-seventeen, or something. Star Shirogane, the brightest one in constellation Abyssus._

_Keith..._

An incredibly corny thing, Keith knew. One of the many corny things that had grabbed him by the neck and forced him down a path of cavity-inducing, chest rotting decay. First came the star, then came a comet. Takashi. One would expect a baby to pop up next.

But then came an entire galaxy that was on the verge of fusing into something else, something more, some super nova bullshit that Shiro had managed to name after Keith. Except it wasn't official; Shiro had watched it through his own telescopes, pointing it out to Keith as they lay together outside of his shack, memorized where it was in the summer skies and gifted it to Keith right then and there. 

_It reminds me of you. Hardships and star-based cannibalism. You know, the good stuff. Roses can grow in the desert, I don't know...it just reminds me of you._

Keith had snorted. He'd shoved Shiro and called him a shitty sap, and then there had been blissful quiet. 

Most of their time together could have been summed up in those two words; they were a constant, evolving from blissful, to eventually mournful. 

The ship lurched, and Keith felt himself roused from his fitful nap. He opened his eyes to a glaring light, and Zrax hovered over him, seemingly irritated as he kicked the toe of his boot to Keith's heel. 

“We're here.” 

Keith, pointed and with every muscle groaning in protest, rose to his feet. He nursed the contusion at the top of his cheek, tender and swollen and threatening into his lower lid. Keith tapped it once, enough to sear, and woke himself up properly with a popped roll of his shoulders. 

The planet they'd landed on was busy, to say the least. 

Repurposed hospital was the first thing that came to mind. Buildings of blinding white marble were a stark contrast to the cherry-red sky, and if Keith didn't have such a heavy, bottomless feeling of utter _dread_ starting to settle in his gut, he might have found it pretty. The clouds themselves were purple, covering three setting suns all lined in a diagonal that dripped passed the horizon and vanished with a diamond's ring flare at the horizon. 

“Um,” Keith started. “Where are we?” 

Lax gave him a look like they'd picked up an asylum escapee. 

“Tiloc,” he said, mouth twisted to the side, his six wriggling fingers feigning a visor over his eyes. “You wanted to come back to the Castle of Lions, right? You're lucky we were kind enough to take you directly to it. Now if you'll excuse us...”

He narrowed his eyes, arms outstretched for the crate Zrax dropped into them. He visibly balked, his breath puffing out in crystallized frost that suspended itself in midair, the only trace of his hesitant saviors to be left behind as they wandered off. 

Keith sucked in the crisp air, letting it sit in his lungs as he slowly realigned himself. His belongings felt like a sack of cinder blocks, weighing down each step as he made to maneuver cut, porcelain streets. Alien technology was a given, but there was something distinctly profound about the vehicular transportation that ejected Keith back to the Tron inspired 80s. 

Keith kept to the edges of what he assumed were the roads, hissing delicate swears underneath his battered breathing as the silvered hovercrafts whipped by him. Short of breath and admittedly faint, Keith tapped his mask into place and shielded himself from the glare of the final setting sun. 

Filtered oxygen entered his lungs, and Keith basked in its frigid depths as he glanced around himself. The roads all seemed to only go two ways: one forward and one back. Behind seemed to be the docking station, housing ships and vessels that didn't quite fit the aesthetic of the planet's streamlined vision. It was the only source of familiar comfort for what Keith could only assume to be miles, and he found himself nursing the idea of camping out near there, to settle in and figure out what exactly was going on. 

Allura couldn't have moved the castle this quickly. 

There were wormhole issues, energy problems. Kolivan would have needed to scout out a suitable orbit, an accommodating hub for the masses. Hiding in an already civilized, terraformed planet was almost too good to be true. 

But when Keith managed the attention of one of the locals, an alien with eyes like a fly's and four arms crossed over their chest, they dutifully told him where to find the stationed ship. They had a lot to say about Allura: her kind deeds, her hard efforts put towards the war effort, the Lions, Voltron. 

Nothing seemed terribly off the mark. The usual banter Keith was used to hearing. He thanked them and bid them farewell, feeling their rounded eyes dig into his spine as he walked down an adjacent street. 

The darkness wasn't terribly dark as much as it was scattered. Ecliptic lighting from the moon covering its bases on the sun every other year reminded Keith of it, and he looked around warily, his eyes delving into softened shadows, peering past huts reminiscent of houses and lacking the windows for it. All of the buildings were oddly strange and covered and _white,_ uncarved statues that assessed him quietly from afar. 

Doors sat at the corners of the buildings, and with each building he passed, he noted engravings set into the stone. Some were just vertical, horizontal lines. A vigil rested above each door, though, and Keith contemplated the swirling insignias with some moderate curiosity. 

Keith kept to the street, his mind wandering to contemplate not much else. The planet seemed to be the typical, everyday hub of a trade center, though decidedly less shady than ones he'd seen before. He remembered the darker Dzaemillic, the streaks of neon color that had burned themselves against the lining of his memories. Softer in comparison, Keith at least felt like he'd keep his life if he didn't find anything on Tiloc. 

Soon to eat his words, Keith rounded a sharp corner and promptly glued himself to where he stood. 

_Castle of Lions_ was somehow correct and yet proved itself to be the understatement of the century. It was the same, in the way that the same castle seemed to suddenly be missing an entire wing of engines at the side. It was the same in the sense it looked like an upkempt decrepit skeleton, hollowed out like the lobbies of malls and filtering various visitors slinking inside and out. 

Keith stood with jaw slack and agape, the occasional bump of an alien against his shoulder as they moved by him. Everything seemed to stop around him as his eyes focused on the brilliantly-lit castle, unmoving and the same, unmoving and not the same. 

Keith staggered forward, fingers wrapped tight around the strap at his shoulder. Something was off, and something was wrong, and yet there was no way to really decide what lie where and what needed to be seen. Keith entered the castle and found himself swallowed by its cavernous ceiling, and he glanced around himself, thankful for the mask that shielded his eyes from the harsh glow of the fluorescent lighting. 

Alone, Keith stood in the center of the milling crowd. Allura wasn't anywhere to be seen, nor were the others and Kolivan. 

_Maybe looking for you,_ Keith absentmindedly thought. The only reason to do so was because of the Black Lion. Keith could feel him, somewhere below. Keith called out to him, somewhat hopeful. Maybe Black could let the others know he was back. 

Black answered with a distant purr. Unfamiliar, yet whole and comforting at the same time. It rose up through Keith from the soles of his feet, filling him and spreading him open, gentle fingers prying his ribs apart and baring his heart to the unseen entity. Almost like the first time Keith had allowed Black's presence inside of him, really. 

Rolling his jaw, Keith made his way to the closest person who looked like they were familiar with what was going on.

_____ 

'What was going on' erred on the side of subjective. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about the castle and what it did, and everyone seemed to have an extra thirty-page essay they carried specifically with them that demonstrated all the ways _they_ would run this rodeo. Keith felt his eyes glaze over the more the current alien went on about trade agreements with the solar colonies in Naxuth, and how they should have been more careful with the empire's eyes on them and their biochemical energy that could be used to fuel new-age ships. 

Keith pretended he knew what they were talking about, managing a smile in between nodding. Keith's whole focal point of his life had been to stay on the sidelines. Let others do the talking with the important shit for him. Offer an opinion if needed. Leave when over. 

Rinse and repeat. 

It was this exact reason why he'd always done that. He couldn't glean much of anything aside from the fact that the castle was just _there,_ like it always had been, like it was the most natural thing in the world that everyone had grown accustomed to. It sent Keith up the wall, pissed sideways off and baffled upside down. 

He smacked his palm to the plane of his forehead, forcing a deep breath as he let his current train of thought sail away into nothing. His only saving grace had been the money he'd remembered to bring along. The same currency was still abound, yet somehow it was worth more in this corner of the universe. Keith had been able to buy himself a room in the castle itself, some low storage shelters in the cellar hallways remade into cheap bedrooms. Keith only had it for a few movements, but he'd already decided if nothing came his way about Allura and the others by then, it'd be time to move on and look for them somewhere else. 

Keith was almost convinced this castle was an elaborate hoax made to make money. 

Yet the Lion always seemed to prove him wrong. Black was the only one in the castle. Black purred and rumbled, probing Keith's mind curiously. It always seemed to ask a question, to which Keith would always answer, _haven't I told you this before?_

He got no answer in the traditional sense, of course. Black would always quiet down, back down from Keith's headspace and leave him alone. It was an emptying feeling, a cold numbing at the ends of his fingertips, but Keith pretended he didn't care. It was just Black. Black had always been more flighty than Red, not there and yet he always was. 

Yet there was something distinctly “cold-shoulder” about Black. Keith pondered the feeling it left at the bottom of his heart, the way it seemed to rise and swell and make his chest hurt. 

_That's anxiety._

_You need to shut up._

Keith grumbled, incoherent words lost to the dark corners of his tiny room as he threw his legs over the edge of the bed. Sleep unbecoming was a normal habit of his these days, but when it was considered a technical five in the morning and he still found himself wide awake, exasperation gave way to irritation. He slid his boots on over his suit, tapped his mask into its usual place, and wandered free into the dark hallways. 

Not everyone worked on the same schedule. Some people didn't even seem to sleep. There was a particular alien that patrolled the hallways, lingering like a ghost and just as pale as one. Amorphous, silent, with eyes the equivalent of gouged gore and dyed black, they were pretty hospitable. 

Keith asked for directions to the hangars, where visitors were allowed to station their ships with special permission and gaze upon the lions. The sentry nodded, and they parted ways, and Keith's chest filled with the equivalent of drowning in lake water. 

Even if no one worked on the same schedule, it was still quiet. The lights had been softened, washing out in gentle rays that swept over the husks of pods and ships. Black was further down into the belly of the castle, and Keith followed his tug down spiraled staircases. The deeper Keith went, the more Black seemed to weigh on him. 

It was almost suffocating by the time Keith made it to him. 

He sat still in the center of his hangar, purple force field around him like a cracked-egg dome. It peeled away as Keith stepped closer, and with a jump start to his heart that had Keith's insomnia flying out the window, Black leaned forward and _roared._

An audible thing, one that shook the castle's very foundation. 

Keith chewed around the heart in his mouth. It thundered against his teeth, and he clenched his jaw with outstretched hands. 

“Whoa, hey,” he said. “Whoa. Don't do that. That's loud. That's-” 

Lights began to flash around him, and Keith swore lightly underneath his breath. The sound of metal scraping against metal filled the air, and Keith furrowed his brow as he quickly backed out of Black's hangar. Someone was just entering the castle in the loading docks, but within Black's space, it sounded like the wall was being torn from the castle. 

It was Keith's signal to go. He looked to Black one more time, catching the force field as soon as it wrapped itself back around the lion like flower petals. Black's eyes were trained on him, still glowing, following Keith's presence as it left the hangar. 

Black lingered inside his head. Honeyed and layered, he coated the inside of Keith's thoughts like a warm blanket. It was different somehow, restriven, like there was a rift that Black was desperately trying to cross to understand Keith's sudden intentions. 

But what sudden intentions? 

Keith asked, but Black retreated, offering nothing in the way of an answer. Typical lion behavior he was used to, but the behavior he didn't expect from a bond they already shared. He settled back in his room, uncertain, the lingering echo of hangar doors slipping shut ringing in his ears. Keith idly listened to it, looking to his hand and searching for the answers he was desperately grasping at in heartlines he'd never believed in.

Obligatory morning came with a harsh rapping against his door. Keith's slumber tugged him down into a darkness he was sure only the dead could see, and with heavy eyelids clinging to his eyes, he distantly found himself wondering why he'd been so tired in the first place. It rendered him irritable as he finally opened his door mid-knock, a glare to his mauve gaze that immediately burned into the three eyes of the alien he'd talked with some few days before. 

“Allura is back,” they grunted, standing their ground. “That is who you wanted to see, correct?” 

Keith nodded, running a hand down his face. “Yeah,” he muttered, fingertips catching on the bags underneath his eyes. “Yeah. Thanks, here.” 

He reached to his side, tugging his bags this way and that as he fetched the promised gac. The alien held their hand out for it, and Keith dropped the coins at the center of three, bulky fingers. 

“Have a nice day,” it nearly cooed. Keith snapped his gaze to the alien's departing back, watching it saunter down the corridor. He sighed, sleep still clinging to his retinas and clouding his vision. Alertness still seemed keen on burying itself in the muck of Keith's chest, but he wrangled what he could from it as he quickly washed himself in the small excuse of a bathroom and dressed himself. 

His boots felt heavy as they walked the path to central command. Central command itself was a public hub, staffed with officers that Keith had never seen before to man the terminals and oversee supply routes. Everything worked like a well-oiled machine a little too well, and Keith's suspicions that something was _off_ still lingered in the membrane of his mind, tickling the back of his neck like he was being watched. 

It made his neck hurt as he craned to look around crowded strangers, all of whom were waiting for something. He heard idle mutterings of _Allura_ this, _Lions_ that. It was enough to keep him around, wedged between aliens who smelled like rusted metal and heavy cleaning chemicals. Keith's head felt light, but he kept his gaze turned toward where everyone else was looking. 

It was an altar, almost. A podium. One Keith was used to, one Keith had been on many times after chasing galra up the stairs that led to it. He eyed it adamantly, arms over his chest as he waited, his own bated breath mingling with the rest of the crowd's. 

Then finally, she appeared. 

She was the same, and yet she wasn't. Allura's hair was as white as it had ever been, but it lacked its cloudy proportions, settled instead as a weighted braid draped over her shoulder. Keith's immediate observation was with the distinctive amethyst colored armor she wore, and his brow arced into his hairline as he turned to face her properly. 

“Citizens of the Alliance,” she started, her familiar voice smothering the rest of the rabble. “With trade agreements secured in the southern sector of Efermentis, I'm full glad to declare that it is now safe enough for us to utilize and make a full addition to what we've worked so hard for. The galra will bother us there no more, and our reaches of peace and hope shall hopefully gain its clutches even further beyond. I thank you all for your patience and hard work with helping us secure such a vital part of our plans and our neighboring galaxy.” 

The crowd cheered, jeered, and bumped against Keith uncomfortably. Keith watched Allura move, and the panic to catch up to her retreating person flared like a combustive flame in his chest. Luckily, she only backed up a few steps, finding her place centered between four others as they spilled out from the doors behind her. They took up their clearly practiced places at her side, and suddenly the world around Keith didn't seem quite so loud.

Shiro. 

He was standing at Allura's right, an empty smile on his lips as he looked over the crowd. Shiro, with Pidge to _his_ right, and Lance and Hunk to Allura's left, they were all there, and so was...

So was Shiro. 

_Staring at too much of the same thing messes with our heads, you know? It's like...it's like going snow-blind, or like, seeing mirages in the desert. You've gotta be careful, because the same thing can happen up there in space. Staring at too much of the same thing will eventually make you lose your way. You gotta keep yourself in check._

Keith wasn't even aware of his mouth moving. It wasn't until Shiro's name managed to rip past his throat did he even register his current state of being. It was in overdrive, his heart slamming against his breastbone, looking for a way out to the man who stood so far above him, so far _away_ from him. 

Keith felt his feet carry him forward, pushing past alien bodies that felt more like brick walls. But he called out for Shiro again, and there was that funny phenomenon where everything seemed to come to a halt around Keith. It all stopped the moment cool grey met his own eyes, and the seconds spanned into millennia between them. 

Lack of recognition, mixed with confusion. Two things that circled the drain before slowly, something seemed to light up behind Shiro's eyes. Keith watched his brow crease and furrow, and the look of concerned realization was the last thing Keith saw before the familiar feeling of a whipped crack met the base of his skull.

_____

Keith noticed the bindings first. 

Unnecessary, but anything Keith might have felt in tandem to the realization fogged itself in his mind as he slowly blinked his eyes open. The white-fuzz of the room settled into something smoother, more even and revealing the familiar backdrop of the castle's kitchen. Keith was tied to one of the chairs at the table, hands bound to the armrests and his feet tethered to the pole that kept him and the piece of furniture upright. 

He wriggled slightly, rolling his shoulders slowly in an attempt to pop them. 

“Oh, good!” 

Coran's voice dripped from his right, before he himself leaned into Keith's field of vision. Pouch in hand, a straw had been poked through to its depths and was carefully placed where Keith wouldn't need his hands. 

“There you are, lad. Sorry for tying you down. It's just a precaution until the paladins get back, you know. We're a little wary of ya, that's it. There's no reason to worry though.” He sat in front of Keith, echoing a groan that bubbled inside of Keith's chest. “You caused us quite a scare! I don't think anyone's told you certain areas are off limits, did they? That's understandable. Though knocking you onto your willies was an accident. Sorry again.” 

He rubbed at his beard, something resembling more of a pelt that merged into his relatively tamer mustache. Keith eyed them both warily, before his gaze fell to the table. “I'll remember for next time,” he muttered, voice ragged, rolling with the continued motion of his shoulder. “What even happened anyway? I...” 

Keith cut himself off. Shiro resurfaced like a boil against his skin, and he turned his gaze awkwardly to the side. 

“It seems like you know one of our members!” Coran said, his usual, pleasant smile the only thing Keith found familiar comfort in. Keith didn't quite know what to think of any of this yet, but there was a feeling in his spine that kept him upright and tense, a whisper in the back of his mind that who he saw wasn't quite what he was used to. 

It was evident, in the way the evidence quite clearly presented itself in the physical manifestation of orange hair. That beard was something Keith didn't remember leaving Coran with, and he kept his eyes on it, swallowing hard. “I do?” he asked, his voice cracking and dropping its pitch. 

“Aye! Takashi vouched for you. Said something about being so excited to see him, that you couldn't help but run forward and try to catch up with all of us. And, well, we trust him. You'll be able to reunite once he's back from counting heads and taking supplies.” 

Coran leaned back in his chair, hands folded over his abdomen. Silence built a brick wall between the two, and the corner of Keith's mouth twitched. “Er, yeah. Yeah.” 

Heaving a breath, Keith leaned forward. Instead of making awkward eye contact with his captor-but-not-quite-captor, he kept his head bowed, nursing the headache blooming from the back of his skull. It played at the edges of his head and made his vision throb, his only relief in the bitter liquid Coran had offered him. He'd mentioned something about a medicine in there, before he'd wandered off, leaving Keith on his own and wild mild anxiety over what he was ingesting.

Coran's departure left Keith alone with the familiar humming of the machines, the goo dispensers he'd despised. Keith eyed one, thoughtful, rolling his jaw and bouncing his knee. He contemplated escape. He _could_ have, for how loosely he'd been tied there. Part of him wondered if it'd been intentional, with the way he could twist his hands in his restraints and not have to worry about cut circulation. 

But something else wondered if it was intentional for different purposes. 

Trust. 

Either to gain his, or to show they had some for him, already. He lingered on the feeling, the conclusion that nothing was off...or at least, not too far off from metaphorical home-base. It was still entirely possible that his time in the star had been warped, and space-time relatively to his position and the castle's came into play. 

Maybe he'd been time-locked, and the others had been out, looking for him. 

Maybe he'd simply gotten stuck, and broke free on the other side of the star after a pregnant pause in space-time. 

Maybe he was just stupid. 

No matter how hard he scrubbed at the recent images of his floating memories, Shiro's face stood out like he'd just seen it yesterday, smiling softly before boarding the ship to his demise. 

Keith knew the dead just didn't come back like that. 

He bit his lip, contemplative. So maybe it was Shiro. So maybe he'd been playing with Voltron's comet. So maybe he'd fucked up and trespassed a fissure he wasn't meant to cross. 

Fuck. 

“Fuck.”

The word slipped out of his mouth, edging more on whispered than actually spoken. 

“So you're awake,” answered another voice anyway, and Keith turned to see Allura in the doorway. 

She smiled, arms crossed over her chest, legs mimicking the gesture. “Somehow I knew you wouldn't be out for long.”

The sound of her heavy footfalls broke the stillness, and Keith straightened himself with a grimace. He'd been sitting still for too long. Luckily for him, Allura stepped in behind him, bending over to undo the measly restraints. 

“I appreciate you for not taking off once you woke up,” she said, voice muffled as it traveled up from underneath Keith's chair. “I was a little bit paranoid you might. But someone insisted I keep the restraints light. I'm glad to see his judgment wasn't misplaced.” 

_His._

Shiro's. 

Keith cleared his throat, slowly stretching his arms out before him. His stiff shoulder finally broke through a satisfying pop of the joint, and he exhaled, fingers rubbing at his tender wrists. He pushed Shiro to the cellar of his mind, focusing his attention instead on the woman at his side, hip propped against the table and gazing imploringly down at him. 

“What's your name?”

“Keith.” 

Allura nodded. She reached up to rub at the corner of her jaw, her gaze flicking to the doorway. “Right,” she said. “I'm Princess Allura of Altea. This is my castle.” 

Princess Allura. 

Altea. 

My castle.

This was an introduction. 

Keith smothered his anxiety as he nodded along to her words. “I gathered as much,” he offered, shifting slowly in his seat. 

“And from what I've been told,” Allura started, “you've been looking for me. More than one person has alerted me to your...inquisitive presence. Is there any reason as to why...?” 

She tilted her head to the side, leaning her weight against the palm of her hand. The subtle _tick_ of her nails hitting the tabletop filled the air, and Keith timed his inner argument to their beat. 

He could lie. 

Or he could go off the assumption this Allura was similar to the one he was used to, and use her position of power to his advantage. 

Something told him the latter was the better answer. 

“I think I'm lost,” Keith conceded, looking to her earrings instead. They were blue, a sparkling sapphire presence where purple would have been. “Or, I hope it's as easy as that, anyway.” 

He leaned forward against the table, propping his torso onto his elbows. He watched Allura quirk a brow before sliding into the seat next to his. 

“Lost?” 

She caught onto the implications behind the word. Keith was grateful, despite his awkward words tumbling from his mouth. 

“Yeah. There was, um... Where to begin, really.” 

He started with the comet. It was the easiest to explain, compared to his fuzzy theory of crossing some dimension's threshold. He felt like a child showing his father his drawings of haphazardly put together robots again, trying to convince him of the outrageous universe they lived in and how it all tied together and was _real._

The only difference between then and now was the stride in which Allura took the information. 

“I see,” she said, her hand to her chin, her brows furrowed as she searched Keith's expression for hidden answers. “And you say everything seemed off after your ship escaped the star and broke down, yes?”

Keith nodded. 

“It just...felt wrong. Those two aliens saved me and brought me here, and then I...I don't know. I guess common sense is finally coming into play. It helps the Allura I knew wore pink.” 

He gestured to her. She looked down at herself, wide eyes gone curious, blinking. 

“Pink?” she asked. “That's quite peculiar...I've never been fond of the color. What of Coran?” 

“Missing the beard.” 

She hummed. “And the comet, you said you found one? A transdimensional comet?” 

“Yeah. I-I don't know what it did, or how it worked, but it must have...it must have been the reason why I'm here now.” Keith rubbed at the bridge of his nose, soundly irritated at himself. “I know it sounds crazy.”

“No,” Allura interjected, her voice keening on careful, thoughtful. “No, not at all. Transdimensional comets are named as such for a reason. Their distinctive properties in ripping the fabric of the universe apart for small windows at a time are the reason they're highly sought out. It's hard to get our hands on one, after the knowledge that Voltron's construction centered around such an object. So...no, I believe you, Keith.” 

She smiled. An ounce of kindness dripped past her teeth and bled into the corners of her mouth, and it almost hurt to look at. Keith's heart bit a rock as he turned his gaze away. 

“I...thanks.” He expected more a fight. “I appreciate the honesty.” 

“And I appreciate _yours._ If you wouldn't mind extending it further, and please, pardon my intrusiveness, but would you care to elaborate on the state of your Voltron...?” 

A hope glimmered in Allura's eyes that rang all too familiar with the ones he was used to. Underlying intentions sang their holy lyrics of missing paladins for abandoned lions, and it was with marginal hesitance that Keith explained his tempered bonds with Red and Black. 

“So not only one lion, _but_ the head and Voltron's right arm as well? That's...that's incredible, Keith. Even our own are just chosen by one lion. I wonder what they would do with you.” 

Allura leaned forward, a sudden gasp wrenching her back. “Oh my! That might explain the surge of energy from just the other night! Black sent out a signal to the other lions. Was that your doing, Keith?”

Keith's mouth dried, and he swallowed hard. “I...found myself in the lower decks, yes,” he said, words like cotton sticking to his tongue. “I heard Black roar. I didn't linger to see why, though. I figured it must have been one of you.” 

Shiro. 

Keith let the image of Shiro in Black paladin armor grace his thoughts, before forcefully pushing them to the side again. Shiro seemed like a Black kind of person. Keith wouldn't let himself linger on the thought. 

Allura had leaned back, one long leg draped over the other. “Hm, well. I suppose there's not much we can do aside from general theoretical thinking and minor discussion if all we do is sit here. Tell me, Keith, what are your plans, if you have any?” 

The one-eighty grabbed Keith by the throat, and his train of thought wrecked. “I...I'm not sure,” he said, looking to the palm of his gloved hand. “I suppose there's nothing else to do aside from find my way back. But if you don't have...” 

“A transdimensional comet, then I'm afraid that's not possible at the moment.” 

An impasse. 

Keith expected as much, but it still weighted itself in his gut. Keith felt his stomach shrivel and die, and the water he'd sucked down earlier felt stagnant sitting inside of him. 

“I'll tell you what.” 

Allura shifted, leaning forward. Painted nails crept towards Keith, fanned out upon the table's surface and turned upward. “We're missing a paladin. Our Black paladin. If you agree to help us, just...tentative steps forward in our own mission, on our side of things, I can assure your safety and the availability of resources on hand for you to use. I know it's asking a lot, but...”

 _But please._

Allura's unspoken words rang loud and clear in Keith's ears, and he met her gaze. The implications in her offer alluded to something more, hidden intentions that seemed to lace every narrative of Keith's current novel. There wasn't much else to do but keep turning the pages, though, and he swallowed hard with a firm nod. 

Allura started him out with basic training.

_____

The Blade of Marmora was a familiar presence to the new formula of universal takeover, more out in the open than Keith's and donning blue instead of purple. With Kolivan dead, his somewhat comforting presence was taken over by Thace instead. Keith passed him here and there, with only small comments aimed at his own uniform. 

Keith observed theirs, infinitely curious in the intricate, differential detailing. Nearly the same to his own, the only caveat being colors and detailing mirroring past war symbolism of the galra. Their blades were two-handed, long and lethal and nearly in a state of constantly awoken. 

Keith watched their presence fade in and out of the castle almost longingly. 

Training was more a subtle interrogation than it was getting him acquainted with everyone else. 

“I'm afraid the other paladins have an extended tour around a war-ridden galaxy we've been trying to gain a foothold in,” Allura mused, apologetic as her hands swept over myriad screens. She pulled up map after map, tapping in the idle note here and order there as Keith watched, boredly, at her side. His purple uniform had been swapped out for his normal clothes, leaving him feeling bare and vulnerable as the castle's drafts played at the nape of his neck.

“It's rare the opportunity shows itself.” She sighed, dropping her arms to her side. “But that's not what we're here to talk about. What we're here to talk about is you and the black lion. Are you ready?” 

They'd agreed to meet back up once Allura's duties ebbed into a calm. Keith had learned her position had taken hold of the known universe much faster than his own Allura's had, her presence known to almost every star at the far edges of the universe and back, and just as fiercely guarded. Zarkon was, apparently, still a threat, but one Keith had yet to see how or why for himself. 

Either way, Zarkon was the last thing on his mind as he and Allura approached Black's hangar. Black was on all fours, its shield swaddling it like a caterpillar in the cocoon. They approached the glowing blue forcefield, and Keith stopped where Black would drop his maw. 

“Are you sure about this?” He crossed his arms over his chest, gesturing idly to the robot. “I mean, if it won't take anyone else, I don't know what to tell you.” 

Allura visibly worried at her lip, but she shook her head. “It'll be fine,” she said, hands on her hips. Her gaze searched Black's face, thoughtfully, before the shield peeled away and his roar echoed through the castle halls. 

They both flinched. The noise reverberated off the walls, bouncing into every porous hole of Keith's bones and clinging. Each note in Black's cadence seemed to fill him with a cacophony of noise, and he shuddered as silence pricked at his ears. Empty though they may have been, Keith felt heavy as he found himself face to face with Black's stretched maw. 

Rubbing his arm, Keith glanced to Allura. She watched from the side, expectant, her eyes picking him apart as they watched him enter the lion. 

It was the same, and yet it wasn't. 

The interior kept itself dark, but the seat slid forward to usual battle-ready position. Keith sucked in a deep breath, watching it carefully before settling himself down into it. 

The seat smelled like burnt ash. Keith breathed deep of the scent, letting it fill the front of his head and nurse images of desert fires underneath seas of stars. 

_Sometimes it's good to come out of your cage._

_Sometimes I think you're full of shit._

_Yeah, well, maybe. All I know is that it brought us together._

The inside flickered to life with a powerful thrum of energy. Electricity hummed through his fingers, and he wrapped them tight around Black's handles. Everything felt the same, from the black leather of the seat to the neon purple lighting that washed over him, but Black entered his mind like a wave of sludge rather than the cold, clear, crystalline bond he was used to. 

He probed into Black, only to be met with Black shying away. 

“Then why did you even turn to me?” he asked, watching the screens blink to life. 

“Keith?” 

Allura's voice washed through the intercoms, and he righted himself. 

“Yeah, I'm here.”

“Good.” 

Allura's face flashed on his screen to his right, and she offered him a tense smile. “Everything seems to be uh...in tip-top shape. I don't know what to do from here, though.” 

“Nothing.” Allura frowned, and he watched her sway to the side. “Or well, there's not much else we can do aside from wait for the others. While I trust you, I'm afraid I'd rather keep Black here, safe with us. He's a highly sought after prize, and I wouldn't want to overwhelm you.” 

Sincerity was her status quo, even if Keith knew it was a disguised issue with trust. 

“Yeah. Of course.”

She kept him close. Like a child watched over its favorite toy, her sparked interest and honeyed words didn't play their tricks on Keith. He shrunk underneath her attentions, but at the end of the day, there wasn't much he could do aside from humor her. 

After all, having the empire's strongest enemy at his side was doing him favors. 

“We've been looking for a comet of our own,” she said, sitting down beside him in the castle's main hub. She'd glided over in her chair, gilded plate covered in what Keith could only assume to be space-Chinese settled carefully upon her thighs. They both poked at the pink nuggets mimicking chicken with two-pronged forks, and Keith decided whatever foreign entity he was welcoming into his body was worth it when it tasted like sweet and sour. 

“So far there's been nothing, though. But after hearing your story and how the comet's been tucked away inside of dying stars, I wonder if we should start looking a little harder.” 

She smiled, and even if Keith felt like a pawn in this current game, he returned it. 

Compliance. 

He'd never been good at it. Emotions only showed themselves through the rigorous over stimulation of everyday annoyances he knew he should be letting go of. But old habits died hard, and outbursts only ever ended in another victim or being taken while bent over the desk. It was his ticket, his coping mechanism. Compliance didn't come easily. 

But Keith sat in Black, fingers trailing the sleek handles as he contemplated bed and his rest. He toyed with the amusing thought of caving in for once, but actually rising to meet the morrow and the possibility of other-Shiro's face terrified him. 

His last memory sans Shiro's death was Shiro's departure. 

They stood in the airport-like terminals, Shiro's arms wrapped tight around Keith's shoulders until the last minute. 

_Don't cry, Shiro. You'll be back soon._

_I know. It's just...it's just hard, Keith. You know I love you so fucking much, right?_

So fucking much. 

It was a lot to take in at seventeen. Keith's world had been built on foundations of shaky promises and moving wheels, hotel rooms in one end of Texas to the other. He'd swapped that out for a stolen scholarship and a shaggy haircut, and soon shaky promises learned to groom themselves into damn-near wedding vows. 

It was a lot. 

Shiro was a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there's another update! Sorry for it taking a while; 10k updates tend to take a lot of time. 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed, though! Find me at spacerot.tumblr.com if you wanna.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this idea for a while now. It's my big comeuppance for these two, after having been burned for a while I suppose, lol
> 
> But hey! I've been enjoying writing this, and I hope y'all do, too. These are some good boys I feel (slightly) bad over doing this to. And worry not; don't let the tags and summary get your spirits down. Things will work out one way or another. 
> 
> ♥


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